Yet the unrelenting spirit of Catiline persisted in the same purposes,
notwithstanding the precautions that were adopted against him, and
though he himself was accused by Lucius Paullus under the Plautian
law.[159] At last, with a view to dissemble, and under pretense of
clearing his character, as if he had been provoked by some attack, he
went into the senate-house. It was then that Marcus Tullius, the
consul, whether alarmed at his presence, or fired with indignation
against him, delivered that splendid speech, so beneficial to the
republic, which he afterward wrote and published.[160]

When Cicero sat down, Catiline, being prepared to pretend ignorance of
the whole matter, entreated, with downcast looks and suppliant voice,
that "the Conscript Fathers would not too hastily believe any thing
against him;" saying "that he was sprung from such a family, and had
so ordered his life from his youth, as to have every happiness in
prospect; and that they were not to suppose that he, a patrician,
whose services to the Roman people, as well as those of his ancestors,
had been so numerous, should want to ruin the state, when Marcus
Tullius, a mere adopted citizen of Rome,[161] was eager to preserve
it." When he was proceeding to add other invectives, they all raised
an outcry against him, and called him an enemy and a traitor.[162]
Being thus exasperated, "Since I am encompassed by enemies," he
exclaimed,[163] "and driven to desperation, I will extinguish the
flame kindled around me in a general ruin."

XXXII He then hurried from the senate to his own house; and then,
after much reflection with himself, thinking that, as his plots
against the consul had been unsuccessful, and as he knew the city to
be secured from fire by the watch, his best course would be to augment